Free Veritas (Atto Melani) by Rita Monaldi, Francesco Sorti

the horizon, lashing wildly at the mule – and then I heard
it.
    It was not very different from the way I had imagined it a thousand times: a tremendous bellowing, which makes men and beasts and all things tremble.
    I had no time to realise what direction it came from: a powerful paw sweep knocked me sideways. I tumbled to the ground, fortunately well away, and as I rolled I heard the roar again. It was
then that I saw it approaching: Prince of Terror, Mauler of Flesh; even as I recognised the demoniacal eyes, the lurid mane, the bloody canines, I was running for my life, stumbling at every pace,
moaning with terror and unable to believe my eyes. In that lonely place outside Vienna, on that frosty crisp day of early spring, in the cold north above the Alps, I was being chased by a lion.
    I dashed into the little doorway immediately to my left, and with the speed of lightning I pelted down the spiral staircase. I found myself in a little open area. I heard the beast faltering for
just a second or two and then come roaring after me, and I made my way into a large roofless building in search of some means of escape.
    I thought I was in the middle of an incomprehensible nightmare when I suddenly found myself in front of . . . a sailing ship.
    It was smaller than usual but unmistakeable. And that was not all: it was in the shape of a bird of prey, complete with head and beak, wings and tail fins, with a flag attached to these
latter.
    Certain now that I must be the victim of some envious demon and his lethal conjuring tricks, I leaped onto the feathery tail of that absurd vessel, with the desperate idea of yanking the
flagpole from its place and using it as a weapon to ward off the lion, whose roar continued to set my flesh and all around me trembling.
    Unfortunately, despite my chimney-sweep’s agility and slim build, my age told against me. The animal was faster: in a few bounds it had reached me and launched itself with a final pounce
onto its prey.
    But it failed. It had not managed to leap high enough to catch me. Yielding perhaps to the lion’s assaults, the feathered ship began to sway and its oscillations grew wider and wider. The
lion tried again with a higher leap. It was no use. The more the lion leaped, the smaller it seemed to become. While I clung with all my strength to the wooden feathers, the ship was now pitching
and rolling dizzily, and its bizarre sail – a kind of dome that formed the back of the bird – twisted and swelled with cavernous gulps of air.
    The world was whirling frantically around me and my terror-distorted senses told me that the absurd carved bird was taking flight.
    It was then that I heard someone declaim threateningly in the Teutonic idiom:
    “Bad Mustafa! Straight to bed with no supper!”
    His name was Frosch, he stank of wine and the lion crouched tranquilly at his feet.
    He explained that the animal loved the company of men and so, whenever anyone turned up round those parts, it had the bad habit of greeting them with roars of joy and playful leaps in its desire
to lick them.
    The Place with No Name, known as Neugebäu, was not just any place, he clarified. It had been built about a century and a half ago, by His Caesarean Majesty of honoured memory Emperor
Maximilian II, and the only thing it retained today of its former splendour was the imperial menagerie, which was rich in exotic animals, especially wild beasts. As he spoke, he stroked the
enormous lion, now fortunately listless and decrepit, which just a few moments before had seemed to me an invincible brute.
    “Bad Mustafa, you’ve been bad!” Frosch kept scolding it, while the lion docilely let him put a chain round its neck and gazed sidelong at me. “I’m sorry that he
scared you so,” he finally apologised.
    Frosch was the keeper of the menagerie of the Place with No Name. He looked after the lions, but also other animals. While he introduced himself, my legs were still trembling like reeds. Frosch